Tech Knowledge Associates (TKA) was formed in 2012 when St. Joseph Health System (Southern California, Northern California and Texas) decided to spin the Clinical Engineering program out into a commercial enterprise called The Innovation Institute. Since its beginnings, TKA has achieved success by positioning itself to provide highly cost-effective CE/HTM services for members of The Innovation Institute and others.
TechNation recently interviewed TKA President George Hampton to find out more about the company.
Q: What are some advantages that your company has over the competition?
Hampton: Our model is to provide a strong local presence and to integrate into the culture of our clients. We work to build a strong ethical relationship with our clients at very reasonable prices. Our goal is to honor our Catholic heritage by working to lower our client’s CE/HTM expenses through aggressive pricing and strong teams.
Q: What are some challenges that your company faced last year? How were you able to overcome them?
Hampton: We have suffered from difficulties finding technicians in the Northern California market. The cost of living is very high and there is a lot of competition for employees. We have created an apprenticeship program that has allowed us to attract people who might not have all the education to be a full-fledged technician. We train them, direct their education and work to groom them to learn our way of doing business. We have had several people work through our program, and some have even moved into management.
Q: Can you explain your company’s core competencies and unique selling points?
Hampton: Our core competencies include:
- Full Spectrum Services: We cover the maintenance of everything from electronic thermometers to radiation therapy units. We provide our clients with flat billing on all of these items and take all the catastrophic risk.
- Cultural Integration: We seek to build a relationship with our clients where our technicians are seen as co-workers and family within the clinical environment. We believe our services are a partnership and we desire to contribute to the public identity our clients work so hard to create.
- Technical Expertise: We believe in a high level of factory and alternative training for our technicians. Our philosophy is on-site experts with factory support is the best scenario for maximizing uptime and containing cost.
- Price Point: TKA prices our services to compete with proficient internal CE programs. We apply cost-to-value benchmarking to monitor our costs and target performance that rivals internal programs, unlike our competitors who compete with manufacturer price points and other expensive outsourced programs.
Q: What product or service that your company offers are you most excited about right now?
Hampton: We are very excited about our comprehensive technology assessment services that we are able to provide for our clients. We are able to analyze multiple factors, from equipment lifespan to patient volumes to be able to provide a road map for replacement and rightsizing their inventory. The report delivers a 5-year recommended replacement and redeployment schedule that can be calibrated for their actual capital budget. We are also excited about our ever-growing parts procurement program. We are experiencing significant savings with this program while increasing efficiency for our technical staff.
Q: What is on the horizon for your company? How will it evolve in the coming years?
Hampton: We will likely move into rental fleet control. Most of our clients have expressed transferring to this kind of inventory for better control and savings. Additionally, we will be much more involved in mitigating medical device security risks.
Q: Please tell me about your employees.
Hampton: We have a great team and we also have a very challenging business model that demands that our team performs at very high levels. Our account directors must understand the business of cost savings in the CE/HTM industry. I am very proud of how they have embraced this area of development. Our leadership team works tirelessly to develop new product lines and fine-tune our current services. We are a family and that makes a potentially stressful environment a great place to work.
Q: What is your company’s mission statement?
Hampton: “Revolutionize delivery of clinical technology services through noble partnerships that empower our staff to be the best in the industry.”
Q: Is there anything else you want readers to know about your company?
Hampton: We are a young company that is flexible and creative. Our connection to The Innovation Institute and its other entities gives us the ability to add value in the total health care services spectrum for our clients.
For additional information about Tech Knowledge Associates, visit www.ii-techknow.com.